IMAP -- A fluid replacement for :imap
                                   *imaps.txt*
                 Srinath Avadhanula <srinath AT fastmail DOT fm>
                                        


                                    Abstract
                                    ========
This plugin provides a function IMAP() which emulates vims |:imap| function. The
motivation for providing this plugin is that |:imap| sufffers from problems
which get increasingly annoying with a large number of mappings.

Consider an example. If you do >
    imap lhs something


then a mapping is set up. However, there will be the following problems:
1. The 'ttimeout' option will generally limit how easily you can type the lhs.
   if you type the left hand side too slowly, then the mapping will not be
   activated.

2. If you mistype one of the letters of the lhs, then the mapping is deactivated
   as soon as you backspace to correct the mistake.

3. The characters in lhs are shown on top of each other. This is fairly
   distracting. This becomes a real annoyance when a lot of characters initiate
   mappings.

This script provides a function IMAP() which does not suffer from these
problems.



                                                                 *imaps.txt-toc*
|im_1| Using IMAP

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Viewing this file

This file can be viewed with all the sections and subsections folded to ease
navigation. By default, vim does not fold help documents. To create the folds,
press za now. The folds are created via a foldexpr which can be seen in the
last section of this file.

See |usr_28.txt| for an introduction to folding and |fold-commands| for key
sequences and commands to work with folds.

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Using IMAP                                                  *im_1* *imaps-usage*



Each call to IMAP is made using the sytax: >
    call IMAP (lhs, rhs, ft [, phs, phe])


This is equivalent to having <lhs> map to <rhs> for all files of type <ft>.

Some characters in the <rhs> have special meaning which help in cursor placement
as described in |imaps-placeholders|. The optional arguments define these
special characters.

Example One: >
    call IMAP ("bit`", "\\begin{itemize}\<cr>\\item <++>\<cr>\\end{itemize}<++>", "tex")


This effectively sets up the map for "bit`" whenever you edit a latex file. When
you type in this sequence of letters, the following text is inserted: >
    \begin{itemize}
        \item *
    \end{itemize}<++>
       
where * shows the cursor position. The cursor position after inserting the text
is decided by the position of the first "place-holder". Place holders are
special characters which decide cursor placement and movement. In the example
above, the place holder characters are <+ and +>. After you have typed in the
item, press <C-j> and you will be taken to the next set of <++>'s. Therefore by
placing the <++> characters appropriately, you can minimize the use of movement
keys.

Set g:Imap_UsePlaceHolders to 0 to disable placeholders altogether.

Set g:Imap_PlaceHolderStart and g:Imap_PlaceHolderEnd to something else if you
want different place holder characters. Also, b:Imap_PlaceHolderStart and
b:Imap_PlaceHolderEnd override the values of g:Imap_PlaceHolderStart and
g:Imap_PlaceHolderEnd respectively. This is useful for setting buffer specific
place hoders.

Example Two: You can use the <C-r> command to insert dynamic elements such as
dates. >
    call IMAP ('date`', "\<c-r>=strftime('%b %d %Y')\<cr>", '')
       


With this mapping, typing date` will insert the present date into the file.

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About this file

This file was created automatically from its XML variant using db2vim. db2vim is
a python script which understands a very limited subset of the Docbook XML 4.2
DTD and outputs a plain text file in vim help format.

db2vim can be obtained via anonymous CVS from sourceforge.net. Use

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.vim-latex.sf.net:/cvsroot/vim-latex co db2vim

Or you can visit the web-interface to sourceforge CVS at:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/vim-latex/db2vim/

The following modelines should nicely fold up this help manual.

vim:ft=help:fdm=expr:nowrap
vim:foldexpr=getline(v\:lnum-1)=~'-\\{80}'?'>2'\:getline(v\:lnum-1)=~'=\\{80}'?'>1'\:getline(v\:lnum)=~'=\\{80}'?'0'\:getline(v\:lnum)=~'-\\{80}'?'1'\:'='
vim:foldtext=substitute(v\:folddashes.substitute(getline(v\:foldstart),'\\s*\\*.*',"",""),'^--','--\ \ \ \ ','')
================================================================================